Notes on the Geography of Spain: The City of Cordoba: Photo 2

The plains of the Guadalquivir, with Cordoba in the distance and the ruins of the mosque of Medina Azahara in the right foreground. The intervening ground a thousand years ago was closely cultivated: Al-Makkari quotes an unnamed author, for example, who says that "numerous springs and winding brooks irrigate and fertilize the neighboring fields and farms, which in point of extent, careful cultivation, and abundant produce, have nowhere their equal in the world."